


Stars and Nebulas

by TheAzureFox



Category: Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Character Study, Gen, oof can you tell the exact moment when my heart broke into pieces, spoiler warning, vague mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 16:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21394849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAzureFox/pseuds/TheAzureFox
Summary: A boy made of stars and nebulas breaks, shatters, and then tries to fix the remnants of a tapestry he himself tore to pieces.(Canon-compliant Bede character study.)
Relationships: Bede & Oleana, Bede & Opal, Beet | Bede & Chairman Rose
Comments: 24
Kudos: 234





	Stars and Nebulas

Betrayed. Hurt. Broken and shattered and torn to pieces.

Bede doesn’t understand how things can go so wrong. He was only doing what he was asked, was he not? He was gathering the Wishing Pieces, collecting them the way kids collected pretty rocks and showed them to their parents. And those Wishing Pieces were vital, oh so vital, Rose needed them, said he needed them, said he _had_ to have them…

So why is it that things had come to this? Why, when Bede was doing his damnest to please the Chairman, to collect the Wishing Pieces the man so desperately craved, that he was being cut loose and stabbed in the gut?

When Oleana calls out for the Wishing Pieces to be taken, those glittering, glittering pieces of stars from far away, of things that contained all Bede’s hopes and dreams and which were stolen – _stolen_ – from him by the very man whose heart he sought to sway…why, Bede wants to tear the very fabric of the universe to _pieces_.

He wants to scream, he wants to shout to snarl to sneer and to bark like a wild animal at the tragedy unfolding before him.

Disqualified.

He was disqualified.

Oleana’s men steal the Wishing Pieces from his hands. They take those fragments of stars and nebulas from his fingers, collecting them in their palms like some sort of twisted tax collectors.

Nausea barrels into Bede’s stomach, bile itching at the back of his throat. It can’t have come to this. It _shouldn’t_ have come to this. He was only doing as the Chairman asked! He was only doing his best to please the man, to repay a debt sewn in the blood of Bede’s very being!

But as Rose looks upon him, face twisted in the very sentiment of the word “disappointed”, gaze icy cold, Bede finds that there’s something very, very wrong.

“I chose you because you reminded me of myself, once,” the man says, all sighs and tired eyes as he furrows his eyebrows and shakes his head. “But I can see I was wrong to choose you. You are not like Gloria or Victor, you have no respect for region of Galar.”

_You’re wrong!_ Bede wants to shout, to scream, to throw a tantrum and to cry like he’s a little kid again. He wants to sink to his knees, to snap his teeth and hiss at anyone who comes near him. It’s only for a brief moment, but he remembers his life before Rose, his life as an orphan when his family could no longer take care of him.

He remembers fighting and screaming, taking his aggression out on the world with roars of hatred and leers of envy. He remembers wanting to curl in upon himself until he disappears, to sink into the abyss of his mind until "Bede" is no longer "Bede" and he is no longer a lonely orphan placed upon a pedestal of solitude.

And in that darkness, in that place of grief and anguish, in that place of a child with no space in the world and nowhere to go, a hand is offered. Light pours through, a man’s face looks down, and Rose is there to offer his hand as a shining beacon of light and hope.

But the Rose that stands before him is not the Rose that met him at the orphanage, all smiles and eyes twinkling in hope as he guides poor little Bede through a world of unknowns. No, this is a man who's lost all hope in him, who's seen Bede do his best to please him and who has found that he must reject Bede for his incompetence.

And for that, Bede feels like he’s lost what’s made him whole. He feels like Rose has taken a dagger to his heart, like the man has carved him up into pieces and left him out to rot.

Oh, it hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it _hurts_.

Bede wants it to stop hurting.

Can’t make it stop.

And as he feels the gaze of Gloria and Victor upon him (“_I hate you,_” his mind whispers, gazing upon the youths who’ve stolen Rose’s love away from him, “_I hate you I hate you I hate you!_”) he feels like snapping something in two. He wants to shred his nails into the fabric of time and space, to maim the silk of the world he’s wrapped around himself and then desperately sew the pieces back into place.

But he’s already torn down the fabric of his world to itsy-bitsy scraps. He’s already torn it into bits and pieces, tatters and shreds which are caught by the wind and never to return again. Bede can’t fix what he’s ripped apart. He can’t fix the hole he’s dug himself into or prevent the way Rose turns his back on him like a parent dismissing their child from existence.

And so Bede falls. He splinters down the middle, splitting and splitting until the world around him fractures. He can barely register the way Oleana grips him tightly, can barely register the way more of her men constrain him as if he’s some sort of _criminal_-

(_All I wanted to do was please you. Look at me, look at me, look at me I did this for _**you**_**!** I destroyed this painting for _**you**_! I did this for _**you**_! So why…why won’t you look at me the way you do _**them**_?_)

-but no one seems to care about the numbness suffocating his entire being or the way he feels like offing himself then and there.

(He’s carried away. He’s carried away and forgotten about, tossed aside like a sack of rubbish. And he wants to cry and he wants to scream because all he wants to do is be loved but not like this, never like this.)

(Oleana says something to him, whispers an apology. It’s like a faint tickle on his skin, a soft touch of wind upon his ears, but it’s just loud enough.

“_If only you could have done better. Been better. Then he would’ve recognized you._” She says, softly, like she’s telling the raging child inside him something he would never understand. “_But you destroyed what was most precious to you. That’s what happens when you chase after stars._”

Oleana’s words are grave, strangely so, and yet Bede can’t comprehend them. So, he lets himself be dragged, down, down, down into an abyss he swore he once freed himself from and down he keeps going until he’s certain he’ll never resurface.)

(But he breaks free. He breaks free and melts his shackles and says “_I can still do this. I can still earn his love._” Because he still does have that second chance. He knows he does. So he’ll keep going, keep competing. He’ll prove to Rose he’s worth it. He will he will he _will_.)

He gets to the fifth gym in all its glitz and glamor, a mockery of the emptiness in Bede’s heart, a painting of something so perfect for a being so miserable. He enters the gym, his head held high, his mind made up. He’s going to win, he’s going to win, he’s going to _win._ He is _not_ a failure, he is _not_ incompetent or _inferior_ to the likes of people like _Hop_ or _Gloria_ or _Victor_ or _Marnie_.

But the gym leader he meets is someone wise, someone hardened. She knows of his betrayal, knows of what he did and how he snuck his way in.

But she observes him, crudely, like the way an artist observes her painting in the making. She calls herself Opal, says she likes him because he’s “pink”, speaks in riddles but says he is talented and deserving of something great.

It is the first time since Rose that someone has seen something in him, that someone with eyes full of wisdom has gazed upon him and called him special. She takes him under her wing, ignorant to his crimes or perhaps caring little for them, and spreads a tapestry of stars before him.

“You will come after me,” she says, painting him in the blues and pinks of candy floss - the colors of her gym, “and you will become the person you always dreamed of being.”

And, as if caught by a spell, Bede follows this woman, this fairy user of dreams woven in her words and stars glimmering in the forest outside her gym, and lets her guide him like the way a mother might.

She is harsh on him, truthful of his flaws and cutting into the facets of his insecurities, but she rises him up in a way Rose never could, vowing to admire him like the promise of a rainbow soon to come over the horizon.

And Bede grows. He grows for her, for this wizened woman of nonsensical riddles and words that know just where to hit. He learns and he listens, watching and waiting, until he, too, can wear the mantle she wears with pride.

Yet even as he messes up, even as he sneaks into the finals of the Championship Cup, desperate to return to his old life, seeking a taste of something he just can’t quite shake, Opal is there to welcome him back, to remind him how the taste of Rose’s aspirations have grown cold and stale, how they’ve become a delusion of grandeur he’s chased all his life and never let go of.

And he finds peace. He finds solace in letting go of that which he could never have, that of which would never make him happy. He lets himself shed loose of the poison which has long since ingrained itself in him, swallowing the antidote to such bittersweet toxins as he welcomes himself to a new life of stars in the sky and nebulas in his hands.

(Gloria and Victor see him long after their rivalry has ended and the Championship Cup has crowned them victors. They see him and they stare at him, waiting, watching, as if they expect the old him to rear his head and tumble down upon them. But he’s long since forgotten his hatred of them, long since accepted he can never stand in their places. So, he holds out a hand to them, welcoming them.

“I am me,” he says, breathing in the high of a life he’s happily carved for himself, “and you are you. I live for myself now. Isn’t that wonderful?”

And as the two prepare their Pokémon, the spark of battle familiar in their eyes, Bede knows he’s finally let go of the delusions that have occupied his mind since a shadow full of light offered its hand to him.

“Now,” he says, drinking in the stars and nebulas of a dream no longer crushed by delirium, “let’s get this battle started!")

**Author's Note:**

> I have,,, such feelings,,, about Bede,, and his relationship to certain characters
> 
> His relationship to Rose, his backstory, as well as Rose's unstated (but VERY obvious) favoritism of the player character over Bede, makes me so incredibly sad for him. Like, all Bede really wants is Rose's love and attention. And he wants it so much so that he's willing to go to extreme lengths just to prove to the man that he is someone Rose can be proud of. 
> 
> But seeing as Rose treats Bede either indifferently or with little respect, you can see the downspiral of why Bede and Rose had to separate. Bede was craving Rose's love but Rose had none to give him, instead choosing to give that love to the player. And Rose saw himself in Bede and wanted to groom the boy in his image, but that image would never live up to Gloria/Victor who, obviously, Rose cares about so much more.
> 
> Which is why I think it's rather nice that Opal sees Bede for who he is and gives him what he wants: a dream, a parental figure to make proud, as well as love and affection from someone who truly believes in him. She gives him a reason for his happy ending, gives him what he needs in life to become the better him he needed to be striving towards all along. And I especially think his end line of "I am me and you are you" signifies how his character has grown from someone who lives to please others to someone who recognizes his own independence and agency in creating dreams of his own.
> 
> Also I think Oleana was aware of Bede's need for attention from Rose and, while she did not act on it very visibly, she was trying to show support for him in the worst way possible: by watching him from afar and doing nothing to correct the problem. I got the impression she was aware of Bede's unreciprocated love for Rose (and Rose's neglect of him in return) but because her loyalty was to Rose, she did little to reach out to both parties and solve their issues (hence her too-late warning about "chasing after stars" in this piece). 
> 
> So fgjhfghj YEAH I have a lot of feelings on Bede and his character arc and while I had my misgivings about it all at first I actually,,, just really love and appreciate Pokemon,,, for writing about something so lovely poetic as Bede's relationship to Rose and Opal,,,


End file.
